Weather Journal’s new radar display debuts today; summerlike weather sets up
Weather Journal gains an exciting new feature today — a radar display, provided by Weather Central, utilizing Bing maps. I wrote rather extensively about it in today’s Weather Journal column, linked here. You can find a small version of the radar display permanently inset on the right margin of the blog. Here’s a very brief tutorial. By clicking on the Radar /Futurecast label above this display, a much larger display comes up that has several features. In the upper left are buttons for “Radar,” “Futurecast” and “Alerts.” Directional controls below these buttons allow you to move the display anywhere you want to see, in our region or elsewhere in the nation, zoom in to your neighborhood or zoom out to the entire continental United States. The magnifying glass in the upper right allows you to pick a location, even to a specific address, upon which to anchor the radar view. The “?” is just what you think, 
answering numerous questions and providing a much more in-depth tutorial than I am providing here. The four-arrows icon in the upper right expands the radar to cover your screen. Beneath these icons is a control to animate the radar or futurecast, and below that an expandable “Options” menu that has many different choices of what can be seen and animated on the display. One particularly useful item is the “Storm Cells” option, that places an icon on individual storm cells on radar, indicating whether they are likely to contain heavy rain, hail or high winds (or even a possible tornado), and by clicking on each storm cell, it will show you direction of movement and expected arrival times at given locations. The best way to learn how to use it is to do what I’ve been doing a few days, just play around with the features yourself. I will say in advance that the “Futurecast” is a handy little feature, but represents only one computer-generated scenario for what the weather will do in advance — and there will be times that I or the National Weather Service or other forecast entities see it a little differently.
There will probably be just a few showers and storms for the radar to pick up in our region today through Friday, as a very summerlike pattern again sets up. Highs in the 80s to possibly some low 90s will occur each of the next three days, with that heat cooking up just a few scattered showers and storms in the afternoon, most numerous in the mountainous areas west of Roanoke. This is much like the weather we commonly see in July. It still appears likely we see a sharp reversal to cooler temperatures for a few days next week.
May 2, 2012 - 12:52 AM
RSS feed 
Kevin, thanks for the radar function. Now I don’t have to go to any other site, and that one works better than the ones I had been using anyway. If next weeks cool down is short lived, do you expect a return to patterns more like what we are having now?
Kevin – when specifically do you expect a sharp reversal to cooler temps? The forecasted high temps per the NWS for 5/7 and 5/8 are still about 5 degrees above seasonal norms. Is the cool down sometime late next week?
Kevin: Thanks for the radar addition. I have already started playing with it and I love it. It is nice not to have to switch websites to see a radar loop. Everything I need in one place. I feel like a kid with a new toy. Great job!
New radar screen rocks…I like the full screen capability.
Mike: The strong cold front next week arrives no earlier than Tuesday and maybe not until Wednesday or Thursday. I know the weather service is expecting it, too, I was talking to one of their meteorologists last night.
Trevar: It does not look like a long-time pattern change, but more like about 4 days or so before the trough lifts out.
This morning’s HPC long-range map actually shows a “backdoor” cold front having pushed through from the northeast on Monday, with the Canadian cold front draped from low pressure in the Ohio Valley to another in Texas by Tuesday morning.
http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/medr/nav_conus_pmsl.php?fday=7&fcolor=wbg
The radar is nice and I like how it can be manipulated to show our area also. Maybe next winter that radar will be full of heavy snowflakes for us snow lovers.
Wow, that is nice. Thanks Kevin.
Kevin, this cool down that is coming – how cool are you expecting? Just a range of temps – you are not thinking snow showers are you?
I will try playing with the radar tool later – sounds like I can zoom in to see what is going on in my “neighborhood” or at least in Floyd County.
Awesome stuff Kevin. Moving on up aren’t we?
Kevin: I was catching up on the blog and I noticed that the comments are now splitting up onto two different pages/links. If you are on the new radar page and you post a comment it will show on that page only. The regular blog comments show on the main blog page only. The only way I knew that there were other comments posted was that I noticed one on from Glen Quagmire in the most recent comments section. When I clicked on Glen’s comment it took me to the radar page. I looked at the post times and they are on the same day as the regular blog postings. Is this supposed to be happening or is it one of the glitches that need to be worked out? If it stays the way it is, it would be easy to miss comments left on the page you are not looking at; a little tricky on days with long active threads.
For now, the radar/futurecast is on a blog post of its own. That’s a short-term solution, may or may not be where it stays. So there are comments underneath that blog post, and with the regular daily blog post. Would rather keep them mostly under the regular blog post, which I think won’t be an issue as we move forward in time.
If anyone is interested, here is a 3D look I took of the two small cells that formed in Patrick and Franklin counties. (Looking southeast towards Martinsville). The cell on the right was severe warned at the time, and still is at this time. The large “donut hole” is the KFCX radar site in Floyd County. The weather has been relatively slow for a severe weather junkie such as myself, so anything is entertaining at the moment.
http://i47.tinypic.com/9vchnk.png
Blacksburg’s hottest day of the year so far, with a high of 84, one short of 1962 May 2 record of 85. Roanoke comes up a degree short of 90 for the second time this year (first was April 16), with 89 being 3 short of record 92 from 1959.
I played with it some, but haven’t got into all the possible items. Kinda interested in the futurecast option tho. We’ll see how IT plays out. If it don’t, then it will only be another weather site. How accurate it proves to be will be the line in the sand, at least for me. Otherwise, I’ve got enough sites to look at.
Here is a photo of the severe thunderstorm in Bedford County as it appears from downtown Roanoke.
http://twitgoo.com/5u2tqu